Education is on brink of change

This campus has two newspapers that serve essentially the same community. The competition this fosters makes both publications strive to be better than the other. In the end, both are improved in quality while they are forced to tighten belts because of a shared, limited income base.

This rivalry between the papers can be taken as a metaphor for the newest battle in public education: charter schools.

Charter schools, which have appeared in 11 states to date, aren't much of a competition for the public school system yet, but people are beginning to take notice.

The Oct. 31 issue of Time magazine ran an article on education titled "A Class of Their Own." The article depicted successes the charter school movement has seen since the first surfaced in Minnesota in 1991.

By offering a more "hands-on" learning approach and by lowering student to teacher ratios, these schools have become innodated with applications. It seems the public, if not the public school system, approves of these charter schools.

One charter school even accepted a kindergarten reservation for the year 2000 for a child still in the womb. The charter system is only available in eleven states so far, and even then there are limits to how many are allowed to operate. Even so, the public school system has taken notice of this educational upstart.Many openly fight new charter schools from opening in their areas.

The burr in the side of the public school system is whenever a student goes to a charter school the public system loses money. Most districts pay schools money for every student enrolled. When more and more students flock to the charter schools, the public schools lose money.

Charter schools can't be defined as a whole because each school operates apart from any formal board of education. Educations are presented on an individual set of criteria and goals. The Time magazine article showed them to offer reduced class sizes, usually insisting parents take a greater role in their children's education, and emphasize hands-on learning rather than the old stick-in-the mud rote method.

The United State is one of the richest countries in the world, but our children fall below other nation's children in standardized tests. The charter school boom may be the evolutionary jump public education needs in this country. If public schools can't beat this new system, as the old saying goes, they should join them.